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PARNASSUS BY RAIL 



MARION MILLS MILLER, Lrr.D. 

II 



G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 

NEW YORK LONDON 


WEST TWENTY-THIRD ST. 27 KING WILLIAM ST., STRAND 

if fre ^nichcrbotkrr $)ttS8 
1891 



.1 



Copyright, 1891 

BY 

MARION MILLS MILLER, Lit.D. 


Ube Iknlcfecrbocber press, mew Jgorfe 

Printed and Bound by 
G. P. Putnam’s Sons 


CONTENTS. 


Preface. 


Parnassus by Rail . 

Shadow Songs. 


To G. L. R. 

The Shade to the Tree . 

Song of the Stars . 

Songs of the Creatures of Insti 
Song of the Fairies 
Song of the Clouds 
Poems of Sigma Chi. 

To W. H. R. 

Prelude—When Poets Sing 
Fraternity 
Envoy—Hylas 
1 AhoXovQei $gotI . 


net 


The Battle of Cannae. 

Macaulay 

The Battle of Cannae 
Verses Vain. 

A Quandary . 

Endymion 

Ojeda .... 
Keepsakes 
Long Live the King 
Her Tulips Red 
A Sigma Chi . 

When Roland Fell 


111 










IV 


CONTENTS. 


Verses Vain (Continued) PAGE 

Foot-Ball. 58 

A Ballade of Lovers. 59 

Inscriptions and Ascriptions. 

Inscription upon the Book of Songs. Heine . . 62 

Henry Cummings Lamar ..... 63 

Frederick Brokaw ....... 64 

William Morris ....... 65 

With a Copy of M. Arnold’s Last Essays . . 66 

Peele.66 

Dekker ......... 67 

Massinger ........ 68 

Valentines ........ 69 

Translations and Paraphrases. 

Translation ........ 74 

Wrath of Apollo. Homer ..... 75 

Love of Hector. Homer ..... 76 

Ode to Peace. Aristophanes .... 82 

The Furies. /Eschylus ...... 83 

Love Instructed. Bion, Idyl V.84 

Love and the Bee. Theocritus, Idyl XIX. . 85 

John. The Bible.86 

Phsedo. Plato.87 

Preface to the Third Edition. Heine ... 88 

Dream Pictures. Heine . . . . • 91 

The Weavers. Heine ...... 93 

On the Hardenberg. Heine. .... 94 

Sleep. Turgenef ....... 96 

Life. The French ...... 97 

The Moon-Ballad. Musset.97 

Art. Gautier . . .... 103 










PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


Ballade. 

It is proposed to build a railway like that on the Rigi up the hill of the 
Muses .—Foreign News. 


o more the wished height to gain 
We climb Parnassus , laboring , 

Or where Castalian airs sustain 
The murmur of the Muses' .spring 
Bestride the steed of daring wing 
To mount aloft: we take the train 
Straight for the summit with a swing, 

The cog-wheel click of verses vain. 

Once wound the way through grape and grain. 
By laurel groves where song was king, 

And birds had caught the liquid strain , 

The murmur of the Muses' spring ; 

“ Next stop, Parnassus.” “ Ding-a-ding ! ” 
IVe hear to-day ; within our brain , 

Instead of songs the Muses sing , m 
The cog-wheel click of verses vain. 

We meet, instead of nymph or swain , 

Men bored like us with travelling. 

Winds waft to us no soft refrain , 

The murmur of the Muses' spring : 

The breeze might bear with it a sting , 

Dash of the critic's cinder-rain ,— 

Sash down ! and sit we fashioning 
The cog-wheel click of verses vain. 

Envoy. 

Prince Populace, your praise will bring 
The murmur of the Muses' spring. 

You like it not? Then don't disdain 
The cog-wheel click of verses vain. 



v 




























































SHADOW SONGS. 


TO 

GEORGE LANSING RA YMOND 

Author of tl A Life in Song.” 

Dear Friend, if here one thought aspires like flame, 
Song-flame, accordant with a cosmic key, 
Flame-clear, flame-pure, it from thine altar came, 
The least, yet dearest of my debts to thee. 


2 


SHADOW SONGS. 


THE SHADE TO THE TREE.* 


T^HOU art high and bold and strong, O Tree ! 

* An hundred mighty limbs are thine, 

Twigs multitudinous drink the wine 

Of life in all its ecstasy. 

And thou art life and all to me, 

E’en light through thee I half divine, 

Thy form in limb and leaf is mine, 

My joys and sorrows come from thee. 

For I, who am a ghostly thing, 

So poor and powerless and prone, 

Dance with thy foliage fluttering, 

Writhe, when thy storm-wrung branches groan, 
Sway to thy young leaves’ cradle croon, 

Shudder, when down in death they swoon. 

* For the motive and many of the poetic details, I am 
greatly indebted to the poem, “The Shadow’s Song to the 
Tree,” of my friend William Cox Ewing. 

3 



4 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


II. 

All passions come from thee save fear, 
Mine is the aspen heart alone ; 

Thou laughest at the thunder’s tone, 
I shrink before the levin’s spear. 

And, though thine image is most dear, 

Its glory is to me unknown,— 

I dare not look upon it, thrown 
Against the sun in outline clear. 

I would that I could brave his glance, 
But not so timid is the hare 
That startles at my still advance, 

As I, to face my father’s glare. 

Stout guard, O oaken heart, then keep, 
While I my well-known limits creep. 

in. 

For on from west to east I go, 

To star procession counter-wise ; 

I hourly mark the time that flies 
By pebble, leaf, or hillock low 
Attained by me in stages slow. 

Whate’er beyond my limit lies 
In silver-circled mysteries, 

I know not, nor desire to know. 


THE SHADE TO THE TREE. 


5 


For thou hast set the stakes, and thou 
Hast raised, within the argent rim, 
Against the sun, by arching limb 
And pillared bole and curtained bough, 

A sanctuary, cool and dim, 

Where I may hide my face from him. 


IV. 

Yet why this fear I cannot tell, 

The loss of light to me is death, 
Yet loss in light betokeneth 
An ecstasy more terrible. 

Forever with all light to dwell 

As self-less as the zephyr’s breath 
That dieth as it whispereth !— 

I shudder in my covert cell. 


Sometimes the dawning planets wake 

This slumbering sense of fearfulness, 
Sometimes the sudden moon-bursts make 
A fitful dream of vague distress. 

Yet safe beneath thine arms I sleep, 

For thou my watch and ward dost keep. 


6 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


V. 

Thy form I fancy, rising still 

And trance-like, ’gainst the gentle moon, 
When night winds hush, with lulling croon, 
Thy baby buds ; when frosts that chill 
Give place to fairy dews that fill 

With gems thy branches, bursting soon 
Their bosomed leaves. In mystic swoon 
Like thee I dream. I work thy will. 

Moonlight is soul light. Spirit-free, 

My ghost shade passes o’er its bars 
To solve its being’s mystery, 

To be at one with kindred stars 
That cast no borrowed glances forth 
From depths of space and time to earth. 


SONG OF THE STARS* 


'T'HE heavens declare the glory of God, 

* The firmament showeth his fame ; 

Day unto day sendeth knowledge abroad, 
Night calleth to night on his name. 

* A mosaic of Hebrew and Greek fragments. The first 
three and last two stanzas are paraphrases of well-known 
passages from Psalms and Job ; the italicized portions are 
renditions of Sappho—fragments 64, 79, 18, 57, 95, 133, and 3. 


SONG OF THE STARS. 


7 


Their line is gone out to the ends of the earth, 

In them hath he stablished a shrine, 

A seat for the sun, where the Light had his birth, 
A handsel of mercies divine. 

For Strength, like a strong man rejoicing to run, 
Begirt in red chlamys of flame, 

Followed, and robed in the bloom of the sun, 

Fair Love , like a bridegroom, came. 

And Life awoke with the gold-sandalled dawn 
And after the Runner fleet 
Speeded, and stayed not, till day was gone, 

The sound of his echoing feet. 

And Rest, and Peace that is nurse to Rest, 

The dark-eyed daughter of Night, 

With the Bridegroom passed to the chambered 
west, 

And Hesper was nuptial light. 


Hesper, that gathers the morn-scattered things, 
Hesper of harbingers best, 

Back to the sheep-fold the strayed flock he brings, 
The babe to the mother's breast. 


8 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


And Law, that is ruler of Life and Love, 

Whom Power and Light obey, 

Beams on the earth from our realm above 
By starlight and moonlight and day. 

For when, encompassed with sovereign Law, 

The Day-King sits on his throne, 

We veil our faces in reverent awe, 

We hide, and he reigns alone. 

And when the beautiful Queen of Night, 

Full-orbed in her regent array, 

Floods all the earth with her silvery light, 

We bow bedimmed to her sway. 

And yet when dethroned is his Majesty, 

And the moon is in exile, still 
In fiercest and freest democracy 
We serve but a single Will. 

And as long as the sun wakes the spring-time 
anew 

And the full moon summons the tide, 

Shall Mazzaroth come in his season due, 

Arcturus his sons shall guide. 


THE SHADE TO THE TREE. 


9 


And not till cold to the sun sleep the flowers 
And dead to the moon lie the seas, 

Shall the bands of Orion be loosed, their sweet 
powers 

Be lost from the Pleiades. 


VI. 


The birds sing to the stars and us, 

The few that love the still, cool night 
When soft winds ripple their delight 
In music multitudinous 
Among thy branches tremulous 

Whose bending harmonies invite 
Me keep their rhythm. In hushed flight, 
Muffled in motion murmurous 


So soft it seems his shadow’s sound, 

The owl flits by ; the tree-frog’s call 
Joins with the cricket’s chirp ; around, 
Answers the brood of instinct, all 
Responsive as the glow-worm’s frame 
To light unseen, Sound’s subtle flame. 


10 PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 

SONGS OF THE CREATURES OF INSTINCT. 

“ T LOVE, thou lovest, he loves,” 

1 Conjugate softly the doves ; 

And, ruffling his neck-feathers blue, 

The cock-pigeon blusters, “ Ah who ? ” 

“ Why you,” 

Bridles his saucy hen,—“ Coo ! ” 

“ He did it, he need n’t deny it, 

He did it, I happened to spy it,” 

Blabs Katy-did, gossips amid. 

“ He winked with his owlish lid, 

He did, 

At the Moon when he thought he was hid.” 

“ Match me ! ” cries Hop-in-the-Grass, 

“ Catch me ! ” cries Cricket, “ I pass ! ” 

“ Tr-r-r- ” hesitates Gray-on-the-Stump, 

While Green-in-the-Mud prompts him, “ -ump 
Why trump ! 

If you pass such a heart you ’re a chump ! ” 


“ Rig-a-jig-jig-a-jig-jig! ” 

Dances the merry Sand-Grig 
To the piping of Grig-in-the-Hedge, 


SONGS OF THE CREA TURES OF INSTINCT. 11 


And down by the marsh’s edge 
In the sedge, 

The Sirens sing (they allege). 

Sirens :* “ Brek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax ko-ax, 
Brek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax ko-ax, 

Children from the fountains springing, 

From the marshy fountains bounding, 

Let us flute our merry singing, 

Chorus, long and loud resounding. 

For no charm our chanting lacks, 
Brek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax ko-ax ! 

“ Sweet our song ‘ ko-ax ’ upraising, 

Dear delightful Dampness praising, 

Pipe we in the mud-banks oozy 
When the sailor froggies boozy, 

Stagger round in mazy tracks,— 

Come and join us, jolly Jacks ! 

Brek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax ko-ax ! ” 

* An adaptation of the first chorus of “ The Frogs” of Aris¬ 
tophanes. Theocritus gave the hint of the change in lines that 
might be rendered thus : 

The Frog, he leads a jolly life, 

His liquor lies around him rife, 

He needs no slave to skink his wine, 

I would the Frog's gay life were mine. 


12 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


Frog-Sailors: “Dee-dee-deep, knee-deep ! 

Into the wave let us leap ! ” 

Frog-Captain : “ Flog ! flog ! flog! 

1 ’ll trounce him and cut off his grog— 

The frog 

That makes the first move for the bog ! 

“ Stuff up your ears with wax— 

( Sirens, Uiterrupting: “ Brek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax”— 
“ Or if you must sing when you soak, 

Why, drink with a mate who can croak, 

‘ Gur-roak ! * 

Don’t fool with that fiddling folk ! ” 

Sirens: “Fiddling? yes, O grumpy carper, 

Us the lyre-thrumming Muses 
Love, and hoofed Pan who uses 
Reedy pipes, but most the harper 
Phoebus loves us, since we nourish 
Reeds that in our waters flourish 
Which do form his lyre backs, 
Brek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax ko-ax ! ” 

Frog-Captain : “ My song is jollier far, I know, 
Heave-ho, rum-below, 

Rum, rum, rum below, 

Row, row, onward row, 


THE SHADE TO THE TREE. 


13 


When past the Siren shores we go, 

For every Jack there’s rum below ! 

Rum below ! ” (in the distance.) 

Sirens: “ Vanquished ! yet we ’ll sing the more, 
Our strains anew reviving ; 

For often from the sedgy shore 
By reed and duck-weed covered o’er, 

With song we leap a-diving ; 

Or in the depths a-huddling near, 

Zeus’s rainstorm fleeing, 

We sit and warble, free from fear, 

Our choral songs, with voices clear 
In harmony agreeing,— 

While the bursting bubble cracks 
Brek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax ko-ax ! ” 

VII. 

And ’neath pur canopy of state 
The shadow folk of empty air, 

The “ bubble breed ” that earth doth bear, 
Like princes hold a nightly fete 
(Or so I dream), where meet and mate 
Elfin jolly and pixy fair, 

Gay ouphe and fairy debonair, 

In dance and devoir delicate. 


14 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


But silence ! sprite and shade are twin 
And I, oak-shadow, am too strong 
To drag a gossip’s tale along. 

Yet stay ! Puck is of poets’ kin, 

And caught from one his trick of song ; 

His mocking catch can work no wrong ! 

SONG OF THE FAIRIES.* 

PUCK. 

A CRAVEN sprite like Ariel 
Remembering his piny cell 
May mind a mortal master well 
And gibe the ’wildered sailor, 

May hound along the scurvy clan, 

A drunken fool and serving man 
And ’ Ban ’Ban Ca-Caliban, 

Spawn of that hag his jailor, 

Burden : (with) Bowgh wowgh , (dispersedly,) 
The watch-dogs bark, 

Bowgh wowgh , (dispersedly,) 

Hark, oh hark ! 

Hear the sleuth-hounds’ nearing bay, 

At him ! Silver , Mountam , hey ! 

*A mockery of man like that in ‘ 4 The Birds ” of Aristophanes. 


SONG OF THE FAIRIES. 


15 


Fury , Tyrant! we ’ll pursue 
All night long, until we hear 
The strain of strutting chanticleer 
Cry, Cock-a-doodle doo ! 

But Ariel back to his cell 
May howling go for aye to dwell 
And not a fay shall break his spell 
And not a gnome shall bail him. 
The scullion slave of Prospero 
With Trinculo and Stephano, 

Full fathom five may sink below, 

And not a nymph shall wail him, 
Burden : (with) Ding dong bell , 

Ring, ring his knell, 

Coral are his bones, 

Amber is his hair, 

Teeth are precious stones, 

Eyes are pearls rare. 

Nothing in him but doth change 
Into something rich and strange, 
Sea-nymphs, ring his knell, 

Ding dong bell! 

Man is but a wingless wight 

Who creeps by Reason’s feeble light, 


16 PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 

And shall we clog our airy flight 
To do his earthly bidding ? 

We, whose lamps of faint perfume 
Golden-shot through wefted gloom 
Glint like shuttles in a loom 

The warp of Fancy thridding ? 

Flame and flutter, high and low, 

In the sunset’s after-glow, 

In the starlight’s sparkling flow 
In the moonshine mellow, 

Gleam and glitter here and there, 

In the mild midsummer air, 

Cobweb , Moth, Peas-Blossom fair, 

And Mustard , saucy fellow ! 

Burden: Philomel with melody 

Join in our sweet mockery, 

Jug jug tereu tereu jug jug , 

Tereu tereu tereu ! 

For elfin-hunting Snout and Snug 

Have slumped the marshes through 
And Snout hath caught—a glow-worm slug 
And Joiner Snug—a lightning bug ! 

Jug jug tereu tereu jug jug , 

Tereu tereu tereu ! 


SONG OF THE FAIRIES . 


l 7 


And Quince and Flute and Starveling 
Who thought to snare the Fairy King, 

Are in the horse-pond floundering 
Beneath the Jacky-Lanter’; 

No longer Bully Bottom weens 
To set his cap for Fairy Queens, 

He’s capped himself by fairy means 
With merry jest and banter,— 

Burden: The Ass’s Head, the Ass’s Head ! 

Ready with the Ass’s Head ! 

Race him, chase him, till he’s sped. 

Trip him headlong in the grass, 

Pinch him, prick him, let him pass 
Crowned with the Head of an Ass ! 

Ass ! Ass ! Head of an Ass ! 

Head of an Ass ! (Echo.) 

But when, with spectacles awry, 

In search of “ ignes fatui 

That rustics take for goblins spry,” 

One comes among us saying 
There’s nothing in the earth or sky 
That’s not in his philosophy,— 

Poor learned fool! we pass him by, 

We teach no donkey braying ! 


i8 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


Burden: The Ass’s Head, the Ass’s Head ! 

He needs no other Ass’s Head 
Who is to his delusions wed. 

Who peers alone through Reason’s glass 
May unmolested by us pass, 

His head unchanged, the Head of an Ass ! 

Ass ! Ass ! Head of an Ass ! 

Head of an Ass ! (Echo.) 

VIII. 

Above us, golden-prowed at dawn 

With sails noon-white and sunset-dyed, 
The argosies of heaven ride. 

Phantoms of frigates long agone, 

Of gallant brig and galleon, 

The stately spectres slowly glide 
With breeze unfelt, on unseen tide. 

Or else, in hazy semblance wan, 

My sister shadows, vapors dun, 

The daughters of the sea and sun, 

In darkling deluge flood the sky. 

Like me, with light to merge as one, 

They die, their shade-life scarce begun, 

O hear them sing before they die ! 


SONG OF THE CLOUDS. 


19 


SONG OF THE CLOUDS.* 

VE clouds everlasting, arise, 

^ With clear shining natures of dew, 

Come, let us arise to the view 
From our old father Ocean who lies,— 

Our grumbling-voiced father, who lies 
At the foot of the mountains that lift to the skies 
Their leafy-locked summits of blue. 

Come, rise to the summits of blue. 

For thence we may clearly behold 

The watch-towers seen from afar 
That guard from the ravage of war 
The corn-lands of ripening gold,— 

The well-watered acres of gold 

Of Earth our dear mother, so sacredly old, 

The dearest of mothers that are, 

Divinest of mothers that are ! 

Yes, thence we may look on the streams, 

The rivers that rushingly .roll 
To far-sounding Ocean, their goal. 

Arise, for already there beams,— 

Upon us untiringly beams 

* The first chorus in “ The Clouds” of Aristophanes. 


20 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


The Eye of the ^Ether with glittering gleams, 

Rise, cast the cloud mask from the soul, 
Immortals in form and in soul ! 

IX. 

Sprung from one cradle cup with thee, 

Comrade in elemental wars, 

Crowned with thy wreaths, rent with thy scars, 
Grown with thy growth from shoot to tree, 

What thing am I that I should be 

Thy fellow who art mate to Mars, 

A brother to the moon and stars ? 

Free, as Orion’s bands are free, 

Loosed, as are loosed the Pleiades, 

Enchained in equal ministries 

By Law, firm as my phantom bars,— 

With Instinct’s blind antiphonies, 

With Fancy’s fairy mockeries, 

With Vision’s cloudy prophecies, 

We are the Spirit’s avatars ! 


POEMS OF SIGMA CHI. 


21 


To 

WALTER H. REYNOLDS, 
Preacher. 

Walter, dear mate of school and college days, 
Brother in better bonds than Sigma Chi's, 
To you belong these academic lays, 

A poet-life a poem's lack supplies. 


22 


POEMS OF SIGMA CHI. 


FRATERNITY. 

Read before the Sixteenth Biennial Convention of the 
Sigma Chi Fraternity at Columbus, Ohio, September, 1886. 


PRELUDE. 


\17HEN poets sing the coming Golden Year 
* " Of love and peace, when greed shall dis¬ 
appear, 

And want and woe and every evil thing, 
Philosophers may send the scornful fling 
“ Day-dreamers ! ” and the men of science sneer. 


But yet, methinks, that ancient age draws near, 
And hope remains, despairing hearts to cheer, 
While all the ills Pandora loosed take wing, 
When poets sing. 


And when we look upon the dogmas drear 
Of so-called sage and scientist austere, 

And see the doubt and sorrow that they bring, 
We cry, “ Of seers, the dreamer is the king ! ” 
And turn, the truest prophecy to hear 
When poets sing. 


23 



24 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


“ 'T'HE Golden Age is but an idle story, 

* The state of nature was a state of war ; 
While yet the world was young, mankind was hoary 
In crime. As Saturn is a baleful star, 

So Saturn’s Age shone with an evil glory. 

Man’s only nimbus was the Cainite scar, 

For with a brother’s blood his hand was gory.” 
—So reasoned Hobbes, and rang Burke’s 
oratory. 

“ In time the weak and wise joined for protection 
Against the strong and savage. Thus arose 
Great kings, their best and bravest, by election 
Assigned to lead them forth against their foes. 
Then, swollen with power, these Nimrods bade the 
erection 

Of mighty walls and towers, and so the woes 
Of slavery were added to subjection, 

The social bond was fear and not affection, 

“And therefore could at any time be broken 
If either king or people willed it so.” 

So argued French savants, and so were spoken 
Those words so ominous of crime and woe, 


FRA TERNITY. 


25 


“ The State’s a social contract ”—and the token 
Of its annulment was a sanguine flow 

As if the red seals of that Pact which welted 
Millions had signed in blood, at last were 
melted, 

And blood for blood was paid in full remission; 
The lord of lands received six feet of earth. 

Then, as in John’s apocalyptic vision, 

The loosing of the seven seals gave birth 

To War’s red charger, neighing in derision, 

And at his heels the gaunt, black horse of 
Dearth, 

And Death’s pale steed, and Hell that fol¬ 
lowed after, 

So, close on Slaughter’s wild and taunting 
laughter, 

Came cries of Want and Terror, till the scarlet 
Hue of rebellion grew a hateful dye ; 

Hateful the mob, where every wolfish varlet 
Vaunted the color in a murderous cry; 

Hateful the red-stained Knife, the rouged harlot 
Bedecked as Reason and enthroned on high ; 
Hateful the nightly glare of castles burning, 

A warning light to exiles, ne’er returning. 


2 6 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


But oh, the thing that was by far most hateful, 

Was their Republic’s hollow mockery. 

“ Liberty! ” cried they, when the Knife loomed 
fateful 

Against all schemes save wildest anarchy. 

“ Equality ! Republics are ungrateful, 

But France, thy crime was basest perfidy ! 

“ Fraternity ! ” a fellowship of hissing 
Serpents huddled for warmth ; of traitors kiss¬ 
ing 

Iscariot-like, for gain, the best and meekest; 

Of wild-eyed wolves that course in unison, 

Till, void of prey, they turn and rend the weakest 
Who once, perchance, was foremost in the run. 
Fraternity ! O God above, who speakest 
In all thy works that all mankind is one, 

When we thy children wrest, in our own 
fashion, 

Thy teachings to our mischief, have com¬ 
passion. 

For “brotherhood ” has lost its ancient meaning, 
And now denotes a “ company for gain,” 

And “charity ”’s an alms, which pride o’erweening 
Casts pompously to poverty and pain. 


FRA TERNITY. 


2 7 


O for the days of Ruth ! of orphans gleaning, 
Unpatronized, unchidden, in the grain. 

O that the harvest of this world would whiten ! 
O that the dawn of perfect peace would 
brighten ! 

Alas, that still a nation, proud, undaunted 
By mutterings of evil, near and far, 

Should in her name of “ Christian State ” so 
vaunted 

Enforce on heathendom unholy war, 

As Olaf, Sweden’s early king, was wonted 

When roasting stubborn worshippers of Thor, 
To ask, in tones as gentle as a mother’s, 

'* Do ye not yet believe in Christ, my brothers ? ” 


For English orators are great advancers 

Of schemes that soon shall “civilize the world.” 
They loudly cry, “ The brotherhood of man, sirs ! ” 
Yet look, where Britain’s standards are unfurled 
And see her missionaries—English Lancers ! 
Behold her arguments—from cannon hurled ! 
She points the nations to a New Jerusalem 
Where she alone may browbeat and bam¬ 
boozle ’em. 


28 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


And he, who wears the English poet’s laurel, 

Who once was prophet of the Golden Year , 

Hot radical in many a social quarrel, 

Maud, Locksley Hall, and Clara Vere de Vere, 
Now, by example, points a newer moral : 

“ If * Britons hold their own,’ the English Peer 
Shall head the ‘ Parliament of man ’; his nation 
Itself comprise the ‘world’s Confederation.’ ” 

Better be Gladstone, scorned with the aspersion 
Of “ Empire-breaker, traitor, charlatan,” 

Whom Fame shall yet extol, in just reversion, 

As “ Hero, not of country, but of man,” 

Than all your poet-praisers of coercion, 

Those Taillefers who lead oppression’s van 
Chanting of conquest, glory, and aggression, 
Where Saxon bards should sing in intercession. 

What though the British Empire breaks in pieces,— 
Though that is farthest from true Irish thought,— 
And England from her governance releases 

The lands which crime and bribery have bought, 
What matters this, if reverence increases 

And all her children, by her kindness taught, 
Combine to crown her age with love and honor, 
While peace and plenty richly rest upon her ? 


FRA TERNITY. 


2 9 


For either kindly Age, or Eld the cruel 

Steals on with pace that cannot be controlled. 

A few more years her hills will yield cheap fuel, 
Then England’s furnaces for aye are cold, 

And, hapless as her sister island jewel, 

She lies bereft who once was decked in gold. 

If in her might she acted the oppressor, 

Her sons will then rise up to curse, not bless her. 

But if, before it is too late, repenting, 

She lets the people, mad for freedom, go, 

When Albion shall stand at last lamenting 
The flight of capital, its wealth and woe, 

Then, as the smoke-rid skies return relenting, 

And o’er the slag-scarred meadows daisies blow, 
So love shall come to heal misfortune’s traces 
And bless the homestead of the English races. 

Believe it, fame and empire are not better 
Than just observance of another’s good. 

The staunchest friend is the forgiven debtor ; 

Thus gentlest governments have longest stood. 
Their mercy is of loyalty begetter, 

And loyalty engenders brotherhood, 

Since all who join to aid one common mother 
Forget the art of warring with each other. 


30 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


The nations thus, in mutual assistance, 

Shall march together toward the Golden Age. 
We hope we catch its glimmer in the distance, 

Yet often when we view the wars that rage, 

We sadly say, “ the struggle for existence,” 

That catch-phrase of the scientific sage 
Whose cruel creed is one of power merely, 
Sans faith, sans duty, all we love most dearly. 


There was a Spencer once, who sang of Talus, 

The iron man of Law, and Artegal, 

The Knight of Justice, and when doubts assail us, 
“ Is pity weakness, bounty criminal ? 

Has custom made a conscience that can fail us ? 

Is duty only habit crying ‘ shall ’ ? 

Is right but might ? Do truth and justice 
vary ? ” 

Then let us roam within the land of Faerie 

And learn of trust from Una and the Lion, 

From Satyrane of chivalrous redress, 

Of self-control and loyalty from Guyon, 

Of duty from the Knight of Holiness. 

And, more than all, that God is still in Zion, 

And as in rudest ages he would bless 


FRATERNITY. 


31 


Those who in faith and virtue never faltered, 
So still his love and justice are unaltered. 

The reign of Law is powerful forever, 

For right is right, or there is None divine. 

The law of Love is, like it, ceaseless never, 

And God has formed of both, in grand design, 

That double rule which none can change or sever, 
However leagues against it may combine, 
Whether of intellect or wealth or labor,— 

“ Love God the Lord, and as thyself thy 
neighbor.” 

Fraternity, O God-inspired emotion, 

How many evils in thy name are done ! 

For thee how many ships have ploughed the ocean 
To bear the Cross, that bore instead the Gun ! 

How many a guild, begun in thy devotion, 

Became thy foe before its course was run ! 

Did Holy League or Catholic Alliance 
Ever give aught to freedom save defiance ? 

And still the name of “brotherhood” is taken 
By bands among us for an evil end, 

And those who all its tenets have forsaken, 
Beneath its standard lawless acts defend. 


32 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


“We ’re free,” they cry, “and justice will not 
waken, 

So, brethren, let us burn and waste and rend. 

We ’ll teach the world the only perfect polity 
That by assassination comes equality.” 

And so the Old World’s outlaws seek protection 
Upon our shores to fight their foes abroad. 

“ The Flag is free,” they cry, “ so its complexion 
We ’ll change to green, in memory of ‘ The Sod.’ 
The Press is free, we ’ll hold it in subjection. 
Religion’s free, let vengeance be our God. 

We ’ll sing a hymn to war and insurrection 
While Brother Rossa’s taking the collection.” 

As long as Pat is paid by robbing Kitty, 

And servant Biddies never once complain, 
Columbia can only stand in pity 

Bemoaning cheats her laws cannot restrain. 

But when, in earnest, from our chiefest city, 

Go forth the vessels fraught with death and 
pain, 

And England mourns with Rachel’s lamenta¬ 
tions, 

Our deeds should prove “ the sisterhood of 
nations.” 


FRATERNITY. 


33 


And while the shaggy anarchistic German 
To nothing but the nose is an offence 
And with the preaching of a gory sermon, 

“ Fraternity,” its text, himself contents, 

The law should only shear his haunt of vermin, 
And “ board and wash ” him—at the State’s 
expense; 

But when he drops his rant for bombs and 
bullets, 

Then wring his neck, ruthlessly as a pullet’s. 

So also, while in lawful combination 

Against the men of wealth stand those of toil, 
The State should offer peaceful arbitration, 
Pouring in open wounds its wine and oil; 

But when, with fraud and fierce intimidation, 

Cities are bared to violence and spoil 

And homes are filled with misery and sorrow, 
Let justice strike, as lightning on Gomorrah ! 

Shame is it that societies whose mission’s 
To teach the world the truths of brotherhood 
Should e’er degenerate to coalitions 
For low advantage and for selfish good, 

Or seek, ’twixt social classes and conditions 
To raise up barriers where none had stood ; 


34 


PARA 7 ASSUS BY RAIL. 


Until the term “ Fraternity ” is branded 
With all that ’s narrow, mean, and under¬ 
handed. 

For Masons oft deserve the name of “ Mummers,” 
When in the sign is lost the signified ; 

Too oft Grand Army men are party drummers, 
Fifers for office ; often is it cried, 

“ Your Elks and Druids are but banded bummers, 
And Knights of Pythias are slaves of pride. 

A brotherhood, to say the mildest of it, 

Is any company for pomp or profit.” 

Shall then, my brethren, we who boast the title 
Of “ glorious fraternity of Greeks,” 

To whom repute for manliness is vital, 

Deserve the names which common rumor speaks, 
Of “ clubs of college schemers, sets that slight all 
Who will not join their party leagues and cliques, 
Aristocrats who scorn the hapless fellows 
That ‘ have n’t crossed from Barbary to 
Hellas?’ ” 

No. As we see that nations never flourish 
That “ Freedom ! ” cry, yet practise tyranny, 
And leagues are vain that clannish hatred nourish 
Under the banner of Equality 


FRA TERNTTY. 


35 


So let us feel that chapters, proudly currish, 

The sacred name of Brotherhood belie. 

And one that makes the Cross a sign of barter 
For college spoils, has forfeited its charter. 

A Sigma Chi needs not be literary, 

Nor have the “ blushing honors ” on him thrust, 

Nor lead a life entirely “ exemplary,” 

—Though that were well—yet one thing be he 
must, 

A whole-souled brother, friendly, friendly very, 

A man in whom your inmost soul can trust, 
Whose love and comradeship are priceless, 
royal, 

A true-born Greek in all that’s grand and loyal. 

May love like that Orestes gave Pylades,* 

Be ours, O Grecians of the latter day ! 

Be ours such loyalty as e’en in Hades 

Felt Theseus for his friend. May we display 

The harmony that through the Symplegades * 

Sent Argo safely on its perilous way, 

And learn, when wit or talents would beguile us, 
To choose our friends as Hercules chose Hylas. 

* Pronunciation of the Greek professor rather than of the 

English author. 


36 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


ENVOY. 

“ TT YLAS, O Hylas ! ” crying words as these, 

* * Through field and forest wandered Hercules, 
Forgetting them who manned the Argo tall, 
Greece and the glorious labors of his thrall, 

Yea, e’en that golden prize beyond the seas ! 

Wildly he shouted, till the murmuring breeze 
Resounded mockingly from cliffs and trees 
Its whispered echo of his eager call, 

“ Hylas, O Hylas ! ” 

When Nestor’s wisdom, Orpheus’ melodies, 

And all rewards of earth forget to please, 

How oft we turn and let the tear-drops fall 
For one whose gift of loving was his all, 

And cry in anguish on our bended knees, 

“ Hylas, O Hylas ! ” 


’AuoXovdei 0goti. 

Suggested as the motto of the Cornell Chapter of Sigma Chi. 

POLLOW light? but many lights there are to 
* follow, 

Marsh-light is hearth gleam to the weary one, 

Is Hecate or Dian sister to Apollo ? 

Drives that god his chariot, or is it Phaeton ? 



Auo\ov6ei <Pgoti. 


3 7 


White light of truth and pale light of error, 
Crimson of slaughter and life’s ruddy hue, 

Iris of hope ?—why, the witches’ oils of terror 
Burn red and green and blue ! 

Light that leaps as beacon may loom as a warning, 
Bethlehem’s beaming be Lucifer’s flame ; 

(Together they sang upon creation’s morning, 
Lost, now, one in glory, the other in its shame.) 

Israel’s guide that through the desert brought her, 
Cloud in the daylight, fire in the gloom ; 

Israel’s guile, the trenches filled with water, 

That red in the sunrise drew Moab to her doom ; 

Sinai’s flame, consuming wanderers near it, 
Comforting Elijah as Horeb’s holy fire ; 

Nimbus of saint and light of demon-spirit; 
Rayonnant Moses, Moses flushed with ire. 

Angel-faced Stephen, Saul that stood consenting, 
Fanatical conviction burning in his eyes ; 

Noon-day vision, and Saul is bowed repenting, 
Midnight apparition, and Peter turns and dies. 

Where shall we go when truth is wholly hidden ? 
What shall we trust when good to evil turns ? 


38 PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 

Can mirage-maddened men for briny draughts be 
chidden ? 

Is the moth to blame that it burns ? 

Star of the north, once guide of slaves escaping, 

Mocks now the convict in Siberia’s night. 

Heaven’s door is shut and the gates of Hell are 
gaping, 

Whither shall he turn in his agony of flight ? 

Where is help for Russia? who shall heal her 
anguish ? 

How shall she gather her forces to smite ? 

How from the hells where men in torments lan¬ 
guish, 

Shall there arise but the one red light 

Vengeance ! and yet, while blameless we must hold 
them, 

Blameless as we would be thought in their eyes, 

Evil it is that, ’mid evils that enfold them, 

We should re-illumine the light that lies. 

Brave words, O Swinburne, braver never uttered, 

“ Love grows hate for love’s sake, life takes 
death for guide,” 


'AuoXovdei &GDTI. 


39 


Clear words, O loyalist, where radicals have mut¬ 
tered, 

u Night hath none but one red star, Tyrannicide.” 

Yet foolish words, O poet, losing thee the laurel, 

“ Down the way of Czars, awhile in vain de¬ 
ferred,” 

(Oil to quench a flame and strife to stop a quarrel) 
“ Bid the Second Alexander light the Third.” 

Alexander Second, the serfs’ liberator, 

Lover of Lincoln and our republic’s friend, 

Tyrant though he was, left his kingdom to a 
greater, 

Shall it swell its horrors by his bloody end ? 

Evil smiting evil kindles evil solely, 

Thrash the dying embers and they sparkle into 
flame, 

Burning him who beats them, his the mischief 
wholly ; 

Passion wedding impotence beareth only shame. 

Be patient, O people, whose patience is a wonder, 
Wait and see salvation that God shall provide, 

The red sea of blood in walls shall stand asunder 
To close again above the tyrant in his pride. 


40 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


Soon shall the Czar in the coming Armageddon 
Lean upon his people and find a broken reed. 
Whose is the fault if the piercing staff should 
redden ? 

Who is to blame should his own heart bleed ? 

Who shall deplore destruction self-invited ? 

Who shall mourn the last of the despot breed ? 
So down the way of Czars, shall son by father 
lighted 

Go to meet their doom, and the land be freed. 

False light and true are ever thus confounded, 
Flaring as a phantom, flaming as a sign; 

Ev tovtgo vina the labarum surrounded,— 

Shall we miss the meaning lost to Constantine ? 

jE> rovrcp rinac, in hoc signo vinces ! 

Follow light, the motto that circles Sigma Chi. 
Not in flush of contest or purple pride of princes, 
Conquer in the Cross of white fraternity ! 


THE BATTLE OF CANNAE. 


41 


MACAU LA Y. 

O ye who strive with Metre's line and stick 
To bridge by Verse Oblivion's dark chasm, 
See how by simple bounding Rhetoric 
He cleared it with a boy's enthusiasm . 


42 


THE BATTLE OF CANNAE. 


Baird Prize Poem of Princeton College, 1885-6. 

Scene .—The crowded wharf at Carthage. Sunset. 

Speaker .—The messenger from Hannibal, just 

landed. 

MEN of Carthage, shout to Baal whose hand 
gives victory, 

For Hannibal our dearest lord has triumphed 
gloriously, 

And Aufidus, with Roman blood, runs crimson to 
the sea ! 

Yea, shout to Baal, the victor Baal ! sing praise to 
Ashtaroth ! 

For as the headland meets the wave and hurls it 
back in froth, 

Our host dashed back the Roman charge,—ah, 
Baal was grandly wroth ! 

Oh, Cannae in Apulia is fresh and fair to see 

When May is yielding frankincense from every 
blooming tree, 

And there our war-worn army lay in gay security. 


43 


44 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


Within the camp the soldier thrummed his harp to 
Punic glees, 

And on the plain his war-horse roamed and snuffed 
the southern breeze 

That breathed on him, the desert-born, from o’er 
the Punic seas. 

But southern winds blow not for aye nor May-time 
pleasures last, 

For ere the month was ended, came a sturdy 
northern blast 

Which bore the martial clangor of an army, strong 
and vast ; 

And down into the river-plain the Romans came. 
Behold— 

Just as yon sunset-gilded sea, their legions onward 
rolled 

In all their bright magnificence,—wave after wave 
of gold ! 

Ah, then our harps were cast aside for trusty sword 
and shield, 

And once more to their masters’ bits the fiery 
chargers yield, 

And once more, with a victor’s tread, we take the 
battle-field. 


THE BATTLE OF CANNAE. 


45 


Our line was like the crescent sign of Her who 
rules the sea. 

The right was Hanno’s ; Hasdrubal, that captain 
fierce and free, 

Led on the left his host of bronzed Numidian 
cavalry ; 

But at the centre stood the chief by all our hearts 
adored. 

Aha ! how clanged our scabbards as out-leaped 
each Punic sword, 

And cheer on cheer rose through the air for 
“ Hannibal, our lord ! ” 

He faced our line. He raised his hand—and 
stilled was every cheer, 

And then his voice rang out to us so loud and full 
and clear 

That e’en the hosts of Rome stood still, as if they 
too would hear. 

“ Men ; Carthaginians, Moors and Celts, our ever 
firm allies 

Who all for nought but hate of Rome have left 
your sun-set skies, 

To-day I render you your wage, see, yonder comes 
your prize ! 


46 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


“They come in all their bravery, with arms inlaid 
with gold, 

Their horses pricked by golden spurs, by golden 
bits controlled, 

A rich array to lead the way to Rome with wealth 
untold ! 

“ Their gilded blades gleam in the sun, ours long 
since lost their sheen, 

But, dimmed with a crust of bloody rust, are yet as 
true and keen 

As when we slew their legions two beside Lake 
Thrasimene ! 

“ They boast of oaths unbroken—the noble Roman 
State ! 

They taunt and sneer at Carthage, of ‘ Punic faith ’ 
they prate, 

Yet their backs shall feel, by a scourge of steel, the 
sting of Punic hate ! 

“ A hate toward all their haughty race, such 
enmity innate 

As serpents young with hissing tongue and lifted 
head inflate, 

Ere they have well leaped from the shell spit out 
at small and great. 


THE BATTLE OF CANNAE. 


4 7 


“ Then vipers of our Afric wastes, come set your 
fangs of steel 

So biting and so venomous, here in Italia’s Heel, 

That all the rule of mighty Rome from head to foot 
shall reel ! 

“ Go leap, Numidians, on the prey, like lions from 
the den, 

Go, Celts, the spoil awaits you if you quit your¬ 
selves like men ; 

Go win or die, for who would live to share the 
captives’ pen ? 

“ O sons of Carthage, rich and proud, will ye be 
slaves, or free ? 

This day decides not ours alone, but Punic 
destiny. 

Shall Rome or Carthage rule the world ? Choose 
you which shall it be. 

“ Go think that ye too, like yon host, do fight for 
land and home. 

Await their onset, till you see their war-steeds 
flecked with foam, 

Then Charge! and let your war-cry be ‘ Eternal 
hate to Rome ! ’ ” 


48 PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 

He spoke. The Roman charge came on ; our 
centre gave them ground, 

Our wings beset them on the sides, our horse 
enclosed them round. 

The Afric viper showed his fangs, the lion leaped 
his bound ! 

But few escaped; I ’ll tell no more to gloat o’er 
bloody blows, 

For though the Romans hated are, they were the 
bravest foes, 

And every Roman matron for a hero mourning 
goes. 

Yes, in that haughty city by the Tiber’s turbid 
flow, 

The grandsires and the women walk with wailing 
and in woe, 

For Baal has bowed their stubborn pride and Rome 
is bended low. 

Then shout to Baal, the great god Baal, whose 
hand gives victory ! 

For Hannibal, our dearest lord, has triumphed 
gloriously, 

And Aufidus, with Roman blood, runs crimson to 
the sea ! 


VERSES VAIN. 


49 


A QUANDARY. 

VILLANELLE. 


Rondel or rondeau or villanelle, 

Ballade, chant-royal or triolet ,— 

Which shall it be ? 1 cannot tell. 

In stateliness chant and ballade so excel 
That their lovers in loyalty seem to forget 

Rondel and rondeau and villanelle. 

■ For sprightliness , triolets answer well , 

But flash ! and the sudden glory's set. 

Which shall it be? I cannot tell. 

The rondeau rings like the Muse's shell 
With every passion. I 'in bothered yet. 

Rondel or rondeau or villanelle ? 

The requiem rondel's plaintive swell 
Moans ever and ever of vain regret. 

Which shall it be ? I cannot tell. 

Adsis, O Musa ! when rhymes rebel 
A nd over intractable metres I sweat. 

Rondel or rondeau or villanelle , 

Which shall it be? I cannot tell. 


50 


VERSES VAIN. 


ENDYMION. 

SONNET. 

T N some green nook upon Mount Latmos lies, 

1 In endless sleep, the youth Endymion ; 

Ruddy and shapely as a dreaming faun 
Whom roguish wood-nymphs deck in merry guise. 

But ah, for him awaits no glad surprise 

Like that the wakened wood-sprite looks upon ; 
And oh, for her the Night Queen, watcher wan 
Beside him till the beckoning stars arise, 

Who, with a thousand kisses and sweet sighs, 
Storms his unyielding eyelids, comes no dawn 
Of waking love to greet her pleading cries. 

Alas for lovers all who ne’er surmise 

The thinness of the veil betwixt them drawn, 
And die in doubt. Love, open thou our eyes ! 


5i 



52 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


OJEDA. 

SONNET. 

A LONZO DE OJEDA, Fortune’s slave, 

** The constant puppet of her fickle play, 
Whose youth was seasoned in the Moorish fray 
And weathered in the daring keel that clave 

Furrow the first across the western wave, 

Bearing Columbus on his glorious way,— 

Whose venturous spirit in his manhood’s day, 
Ulysses-like, his restless body drave 

To seek satiety that heroes crave 

In wide world-wandering, grown poor and gray 
And sick at heart, who once had been so brave,— 

Dying a penitent, commandment gave 
Beneath the abbey-gate his corse to lay, 

“ That all who passed might tread upon his grave.” 


KEEPSAKES. 


53 


KEEPSAKES. 

SONNET. 

IN little boxes, hidden sacredly 
1 From all profaning glances of each other, 

The children hoard their riches. E’en the 
mother, 

Who haply finds a secret treasury, 

Remembers one like that upon her knee, 

And smiles are checked by sighs that will not 
smother. 

There tiny stockings of a dear, dead brother, 
Enfolded shells that murmured of the sea, 

Her uncle’s grave. There, prized all else above, 
Reposed a button, by her father given 

The day he marched to death. Things little 
worth, 

If gold we count, yet rich in priceless love. 

Alas, in childhood treasuring bits of heaven, 
How oft we end our days in hoarding earth ! 


54 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


LONG LIVE THE KING. 

RONDEAU. 

“ T ONG live the king ! ” the people cheer, 
And lords and barons throng him near 
To give him royal welcoming. 

What lacketh he in anything ? 

He hath a realm, a friend most dear, 

And, more beloved than throne or peer, 

A queen, who murmurs in his ear, 

While round his neck her soft arms cling, 

“ Long live my king ! ” 

What cometh more ? A shroud, a bier ! 

(Ah, burning fell the lying tear 
On him who died of poisoning !) 

And through the palace plaudits ring, 

As friend and queen in state appear, 

“ Long live the king ! ” 


HER TULIPS RED. 


55 


HER TULIPS RED. 

RONDEAU. 

T T ER tulips red and amethyst 
* * Seem Oriental sentries whist, 

Between whose ranks goes one with dread 
To see his sentence—“ Banished ! ” 

In flashing eyes and clenched fist. 

So boding stand as if they wist 
My lady’s mood, and frowned, “ Dismissed ” 
On me who pass their garden bed, 

Her tulips red. 

Will she be at our morning tryst ? 

Will she forgive my folly ? List,— 

She’s there ! O tulips, bow the head ! 

She pardons all the hot words said 
And raises, blushing to be kissed, 

Her two lips red. 


56 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


A SIGMA CHI. 

RONDEAU. 

A SIGMA CHI. By oath professed 
A friend to every one whose breast 
Beneath the Cross with pride beats high 
Whether the emblem greet the eye 
From silken scarf or faded vest. 

Yet when, on dainty laces pressed, 

It lies a girlish bosom’s guest, 

With double force the vows apply, 

Eh, Sigma Chi ? 

But man or maid, from east or west, 
Whoever has been truly blessed 
With love for our fraternity, 

Will be, while friends on friends rely 
Or hearts on hearts for comfort rest, 

Aye Sigma Chi! 


WHEN ROLAND FELL. 


57 


WHEN ROLAND FELL. 

RONDEAU. 

\17HEN Roland fell, as legends tell, the bravest 
" " of the Peers 

The stoutest lance of knightly France splintered 
by Paynim spears, 

O’er all the land, through castle grand and lowly 
hermit cell, 

The southern gales from old Marseilles bore on¬ 
ward to Chapelle 

The swelling surge of a Hero’s dirge, noise of a 
nation’s tears ! 

And Karl the Great in solemn state, with wise men 
bent by years 

And princes proud by sorrow bowed, and all the 
Chevaliers 

A requiem sung while censers swung, and tolled 
the mournful knell, 

When Roland fell. 

The Pyrenees still guard the seas, and there the 
traveller hears 


58 PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 

The story told by Basque men old to children’s 
eager ears, 

How signal fires called forth their sires a foreign 
foe to quell, 

And how ’mid shout and battle rout they struggled 
long and well, 

Till o’er the dread Invader dead arose exulting 
cheers 

When Roland fell. 


FOOT-BALL. 

RONDEAU. 

A “ BAG o’ wind.” Around it piled 
In contest anything but mild, 

A mass of men who writhe and roll 
Down in the dirt. A struggling whole 
Of arms and legs irreconciled. 

Arises one, a “rusher” styled, 

With garments torn and dust-defiled, 
Who, panting, bears beneath the pole 
A “ bag o’ wind.” 



A BALLADE OF LOVERS. 


59 


’T is thus in life ! Fresh as a child 
We enter in the contest wild 

For this world’s prize, but at the goal 
We find—close hugged against our soul 
Earth-soiled and weary, worn, beguiled— 
A “bag o’ wind.” 


A BALLADE OF LOVERS. 

DOUBLE REFRAIN. 

T N the greenest of meadows, by bluest of brooks, 
* Surrounded by lambkins abnormally snowy, 
Sit, marked by be-ribboned and garlanded crooks, 
Strephon and Cloe. 

While the half-whetted scythe and the overturned 
pail, 

The blush on a cheek that is ripe as a cherry, 
Betoken, as signs that were ne’er known to fail, 
Robin and Mary. 

From Claude-like scenes in the classicist books, 
From songs like Lord Byron’s conventional 
Peer out, with affected and simpering looks, 
Strephon and Cloe. 



6 o 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


While fresh from a Hardy or Blackmore tale, 
A-singing a roundel of “ Derry-down-derry ” 
Come, breathing the odors of meadow and dale, 
Robin and Mary. 

We jeer at those creatures of tailors and cooks, 

Sir Puppet of Padding and Dollikin Doughy, 
Caught sheepishly courting in out-o’-way nooks, 

“ Strephon and Cloe.” 

But when honest young Manly wooes fair Mistress 
Hale, 

As frank as they ’re fond, though affectionate 
very, 

A murmur of plaudits will always prevail, 

“ Robin and Mary.” 

ENVOY. 

Prince, praise if you please those inanities showy, 
Strephon and Cloe. 

My choice of models is quite the contrary, 

Robin and Mary. 


INSCRIPTIONS AND ASCRIPTIONS. 


61 


INSCRIPTION UPON THE BOOK OF SONGS. 

FROM HEINE. 

With roses , yew, and tinsel gold 
My little book I would enfold, 

And cherish all these songs of mine 
A s in the dead's beloved shrine. 


62 


INSCRIPTIONS AND ASCRIPTIONS. 


HENRY CUMMINGS LAMAR. 

November 21 , 1885. 

CORWARD he sprang and running easily 
* Caught up the bounding ball against his 
breast, 

The left hand hugging it, the right arm free,— 
And down the left line, toward the darkening 
west, 

Sped on through warding friends to meet the foe. 
Sidelong he swerved and toward the right he 
bore 

And sprinting hard and sharp yet clean and low, 
Straight through the centre of their line he tore. 

And then, with head erect and altered strides, 
Settling his ball and body to his racing, 

Between the backs’ belated hands he glides, 

And leads the field in fair yet fruitless chasing. 

Behind the goal upon the ball he lies, 

A sweet and quiet triumph in his eyes. 

63 



6 4 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


March io , 1891. 

And him, serenely calm and calmly brave, 
Down to his death the pounding waters bore 
With her who trusted in his strength to save 
As he had trusted—in a breaking oar. 


FREDERICK BROKAW. 

Princeton vs. Yale. 

T T OW often in the diamond’s mimic war 
* * We marked his crouching form spring to its 
height 

And, like the shaft of Rome’s young Emperor, 

His swift ball speed in its unerring flight. 

And, when the losing game was almost done, 

How we awaited, all-expectantly, 

His long, hard hit that earned the tying run, 

His daring dash that scored the victory ! 

So ever in our eyes his form will stand, 

An antique athlete in a modern pose, 

Gracefully tall, with ready bat in hand, 

The while his face in proud assurance glows. 



WILLIAM MORRIS . 


65 


“ Handsome as heartless Commodus,” you say, 
The beau idlal of jeunesse dorle .” 

Elberon, yune 24, 1891. 

A gilded youth ? No ! Heart of Gold !—Once more 
A desperate chance he dared, a life to save ; 

Nor till the sea its victim from him tore, 

Sank spent at heart beneath the swirling wave. 


WILLIAM MORRIS. 

“ 'T'HE idle singer of an empty day,” 

* He lifted up his eyes of dreamy beauty 
And saw Time’s Sun sweep to its twilight gray 
Through hours fulfilled of Labor, Love, and 
Duty. 

“ Of Heaven’s glory powerless to hymn,” 

His art is yet that ancient one which wrought 
From purest gold the Shrine of Cherubim ; 

His lack—the coal from God’s own altar brought. 

Hell did he sing ; if not the vasty deep 
Miltonic, lit by fiery Phlegethon, 

It was that heathen land of tranced sleep, 

Of weary wind-swept wastes and waters wan. 



66 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


For coming death, an ever present fear, 

Blows through his Paradise its chilling breath,— 
His Death-in-Life a pagan phantom drear 

Twin to the monkish nightmare Life-in-Death. 


WITH A COPY OF M. ARNOLD’S LAST ESSAYS. 
QUATRAIN. 

A RNOLD, whose day in gentle promise rose 
Yet soon to pitiless tropic fierceness grew, 
Beamed,—ere he sank in sudden darkness,—glows 
Of morning softness ;—these I send to you. 


SONNETS OF EUPHUES. 

PEELE. 

/^"\VER against the Erythraean Sea 

A country lies, within whose balmy shores 
No bird of carrion croaks nor lion roars ; 

The royal Phoenix holds that land in fee. 

Base earth he spurns with, spirit pure and free, 




SONNETS OF E UP HUES. 


67 


And, hid in depths of aether, singing soars ; 

Yet dies at last, he whom a realm adores, 

Alone, in fires of purging agony. 

So Peele, the singer sweet of Chastity, 

Of England’s early poets first in fame,* 

Dropped from his home in Drama’s highest 
air, 

To die apart, consumed with venery ; 

Leaving his wife a legacy of shame, 

His daughter dear a dowry of despair. 


DEKKER. 

There lives in marshes by the river Nile 
A bird beloved of fabulist and bard 
So faithfully he keeps his watch and ward 
Over his sleeping lord, the crocodile. 

Cheerily chirps he, ready all the while 
To dash into the jaws of death to guard 
His liege from danger, glad, from armor hard 
And verminous mouth, to pick a bounty vile. 

So Dekker, laureate of Charity, 

Who sang his sweetest song in Fortune’s praise, 
Yet spent his life beneath her baleful spell, 

* “ Primus verborum artifex,”—Nash. 


68 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


Hallowed with gratitude her scanty fee 
And patiently fulfilled his evil days. 

His “ sweet content ” made “ Heaven ” of her 
“ Hell.” 


MASSINGER. 

In sweeping circles, slowly widening, 

(His eyrie ever centering his quest,) 

The Eagle soars ; one passion in his breast, 
Proud love of home. Whether his fearless wing 
Poise him amid the storm-clouds, or he swing 
Behind some hoary peak’s imperial crest, 

He may at once rise to behold his nest 
Through sunlight-billows upward voyaging. 

So Massinger, the bard of Loyalty, 

Centres his dramas in his native land, 

And nearest scales the heights of poetry, 

When he beholds, upon a pleasant strand 
Circled by ripples of a silver sea, 

Britannia, the trident in her hand.* 

* His actors are Englishmen in nature if not in name—and 
his most admired passages are those relative to his own island 
home. 


VALENTINES. 


69 


VALENTINES. 

I. 

1 VTEAR by the mart a block of marble gleamed, 
* Veinless and flawless,—still, a marble block. 
A block and but a block to all it seemed 
Who lounged upon its side to rest or talk, 

Till into Athens, weary with his walk, 

A traveller came, who, dozing on it, dreamed 

That it concealed a goddess in its breast, 

The maid Athene, glorious, divine, 

And he who rescued her, renowned and blest, 
Should ever live in fame,—the grand design 
Full well from out the marble he expressed. 

Thus here while many see but rhyme and line, 
Mayhap to one alone is shown their guest. 

II. 

Far in the labyrinth the Man-Bull roared ; 

The cry to Theseus was both goad and guide ; 
Its horrid rage made swift his feet and sword 
And weltering in gore the monster died. 


70 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


He all alone within the maze doth stand 
To light and love linked by a single strand. 

And then he backward traced the slender clue, 

The tiny thread that showed the only way 
The long and winding aisles and chambers through 
To lovely Ariadne and the day. 

Herein a not less devious clue there lies, 

Nor doth it lead you to a lesser prize. 

hi. 

Jessamine blossoms with fragrance full laden, 
Lulled by the crooning breeze drowsily nod, 

As lazily over a slumbering maiden 

Their sweet heavy odors are scattered abroad. 
Oh charmed the spell that her life is arrayed in ! 

The jasmine, a hundred of years ago planted, 
Looks in on the garret-couched princess at last. 
Her long sleep is over ! the thorn-hedge enchanted 
Her royal young lover already has passed ; 
Above her now bending—but you know the end¬ 
ing— 

Ah, can you release then the maid here bound 
fast ? 


VALENTINES. 


71 


IV. 

Back in the dawn of time when Fancy swayed 
Her wand of Faerie with a sovereign power, 

As magic seemed the growth of plant and flower, 
Sylph, ouphe, and fairy ruled in wood and glade ; 
Incorporate were they with tree and blade, 

Yet when the night-wind crooned the magic hour 
In whispered charms, each sprite, from brake and 
bower, 

Came tripping forth in form a mortal maid. 

Half hidden in the sonnet’s charmed chime 
Have I concealed a modern dryad here ; 

Rude as a gnarled oak, its rugged rhyme 
A lady yet conceals, who shall appear 
Enchantment-like, at whatsoever time 
A secret spell is whispered in your ear. 

v. 

Merlin the Fay, for magic world-renowned, 

Since he all powers of earth and faerie swayed, 
(E’en all the hosts of heaven him obeyed,) 

When good King Arthur ruled his Table Round, 
Within a mighty oak was prisoned—bound 


72 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


With secret spells that he himself betrayed. 
For Samson-like, importuned by a maid, 

The beauteous Vivien, all his art profound 
To her he told, what steps and interlacings 
Of word and charm would bind a man for aye 
And when she knew the spell of woven pacings, 
She bound her teacher ; thus do I to-day 
A maiden here conceal, the secret tracings 
Who can unfold and break the charm away ? 


TRANSLATIONS AND PARAPHRASES. 


73 


TRAN SLA TION. 

“ Equivalence, rather than transference, of form and effect.” 

New fledged , new nocked , new tipped to suit the time , 
Old Homer's “ winged words ” still hit the heart. 
Strong Chapman speeds them from his stage sublime ,— 
Lang looses them with all his twangster's art. 


74 


TRANSLATIONS AND PARAPHRASES. 


WRATH OF APOLLO. 

HOMER. 

''THE trembling sire obeyed the stern behest 
A And walked in silence by the sounding shore 
Till, far away, he fervently addressed 

King Phoebus, whom Latona Fairhair bore, 

“ O Silver-bowed one, thee I do implore 
Who doth o’er Tenedos rule mightily, 

O Sminthean one, who alway watcheth o’er 
The beauteous cities twain that reverence thee, 
Chrysa and holy Cilia, hear and answer me ! 


“ If e’er I built to thee a temple fair 

Or burnt to thee the fat and choicest parts 
Of goats or oxen, grant me this my prayer, 

‘ Repay the Grecians for my tears with darts.’ ” 
He spoke. Apollo up in anger starts, 

Adown Olympus comes the God of Light, 

Bent is his bow to pierce the Grecian hearts 
And in their quiver clang his arrows bright 
As on in fiercest wrath he moves as black as night! 


75 



j6 PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 

He sat him down and o’er the fleet below 
He sent an arrow, keen and glittering. 

Ah, fearful rose the twanging of his bow 

As through the air the hissing death-bolts sing ! 
The mules and dogs feel first the fatal sting 
And then on man the angered god doth turn 
And speed a biting arrow from the string. 

Nine gloomy days the crowded death-fires burn, 
And through the army fly the shafts of Phoebus 
stern. 


LOVE OF HECTOR. 

HOMER. 

'T'HEY met him then ; she and her maid who 
* bare 

His boy of tender years upon her breast; 

An infant quite, and wondrous, starry fair, 

The only son of Hector, dear and blest, 

Whom he had named Scamandrius, the rest 
Astyanax, because the hope of Troy 

Hung all on Hector of the waving crest. 

There hovered o’er his face a smile of joy 

The while he gazed in silence down upon the boy. 



LOVE OF HECTOR. 


77 


But weeping stood Andromache beside, 

And seized his hand and unto it grew fast; 

Then from her swelling heart burst forth and cried: 
“ O demigod, all human passion past, 

Thy soul so great will wear thee out at last ! 
Thou hast no pity for thy babe nor me, 

Thy woeful widow soon to be, for massed 
Together all the Greeks will presently 
In overwhelming numbers, charge and vanquish 
thee. 

“ ’T were best for me to lie at rest in earth 
Deprived of thee ; no comfort and no cheer 
Have I if thou shouldst meet thy fate, but dearth 
And woes alone. I have no parents dear ; 

My father fell by great Achilles’ spear, 

Who wrapped Cilicia’s pleasant homes in gloom 
And sacked strong Thebes, yet saved through 
holy fear 

The slain ^Etion from a riteless doom, 

Burnt body and bright arms and high upheaped his 
tomb. 

“ And there the nymphs who on the mountains 
roam, 

The maids of Zeus who doth the ^Egis bear, 


78 PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 

Have planted elms. Seven brothers of my home 
All in one day went down to Hades there, 

Slain by Achilles, swift, divinely fair, 

Amongst their snowy sheep and sluggish kine. 

And here with spoil he brought my mother dear 

Who reigned where Placus’ leafy bowers entwine; 

Yet her he loosed again, receiving heavy fine. 

“ But Artemis, whose joy is in the dart, 

Smote her to death within my father’s hall; 

Yet, Hector, dearer far to me thou art, 

Thou art my father, mother, brothers all, 

Thou art my husband, fair and strong and tall. 

O come now, pity me, do thou remain 
Upon the tower here to guard the wall. 

O make me not the widow of one slain ! 

O orphan not thy boy ! O go not to the plain ! 

“ Arrange the men near where the wild-fig stands 
The wall can there most easily be scaled ; 

Thrice there’t was tried by Greece’s bravest bands 
Great heroes and their soldiers, brazen mailed. 
Each Ajax and Atrides there assailed, 

Brave Idomen and he of Tydeus’ race, 

Bold Diomed, there tried, nor lightly failed ; 

Whether some seer endowed with heavenly grace, 

Or their own lordly spirits led them to the place.” 


LOVE OF HECTOR . 


79 


Then great crest-tossing Hector spoke and said : 

“ This know I too, dear wife, but honor calls, 
And much the scorn of Trojan men I dread, 

And Trojan matrons of the trailing shawls, 

If, coward like, I skulk within the walls ; 

Nor do I lust to stay ; I early learned 

Aye to be bold and bravely fight where falls 
The foremost Trojan ; ever have I yearned 
To win myself and sire a name in battle earned. 

“ For well within my heart and soul I know 
That day will come when holy Troy shall fall, 
And Priam bow in death his head of snow, 

And ash-speared Priam’s people perish all ; 

But yet no woe which Zeus on Troy shall call, 
The death of Hecuba or Priam-king, 

Or of my many brothers, fair and tall, 

Whom hostile men down to the dust shall bring, 
So grieves me as thy fate, when thou shalt, sorrowing, 

“ By some brass-harnessed Greek be led off home, 
Bereft by him of freedom’s sunny day, 

To weave in Argos at another’s loom 
Or bear the waters of Hyperia, 

Or of Messeis, toiling, while they say, 

Who see thy tears run down, ‘ See yonder slave ? 
Her lord was once the best of all the array 


8o 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


Of Trojan horsemen, Hector, strong and brave, 
When round the walls of Troy his battle-car he 
drave.’ 

“ So will they say, perchance, while unto thee 
New grief will come for need of such a man 
To save thee from thy day of slavery. 

But may I sooner, under Zeus’ ban, 

Beneath the high-heaped mound lie buried, than, 
A helpless captive, see thee, shrieking wild, 

Torn from my side by yonder ruthless clan.” 

He spoke, and reaching forth to take the child, 
The gleaming-armored Hector coaxed his babe and 
smiled. 

But back it crying shrunk and hid its eyes 
Within its nurse’s fair and loving breast, 
Affrighted at its father’s warlike guise, 

His brazen helm and shaggy horse-hair crest, 
Whose dreadful waving far out-braved the rest. 
Out laughed the father and the mother dear 

When they the baby’s dreaded bugbear guessed, 
And glorious Hector doffed the thing of fear, 

And laid upon the ground the grandly gleaming 
sphere. 

He gave his darling boy a loving kiss, 

And praying Zeus and all the gods, he said : 


LOVE OF HECTOR. 


8 l 


“ Zeus and ye other gods, 0 grant that this 
My boy, like me, may be the Trojans’ head ; 

As good in war, a mighty king and dread, 

That men may say ‘ The son is better far 

Than was the sire,’ when, from his foemen dead, 
He homeward bears the gory spoils of war ; 

O may his mother joy at his returning car ! ” 

He spoke, and laid the boy of tender years 
Within his dear wife’s hands. She him received 
In her fragrant bosom, smiling through her tears. 
And Hector pitied her, she seemed so grieved, 
And soothing her he thus her heart relieved : 

“ Dear wife, mourn not for me so bitterly, 

Thou art not of thy husband yet bereaved, 

Nor will I e’er to Hades hurled be 

Before my fated time, and that no mortals flee, 

“Nor good nor evil from their day of birth ;— 

But homeward go and to thy tasks return, 

The web and spindle, check the idle mirth 
And stir thy maids to work, for wars concern 
The men alone, all those whose breasts do burn 
With filial love for Troy, but chiefly me.” 

Then taking up his helmet, Hector stern 
Departed. Homeward to her tasks went she 
With many glances back and weeping bitterly. 


82 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


ODE TO PEACE. 

ARISTOPHANES. 

IT AIL, Hail, Hail, O goddess most admired ! 

* * Hail, Hail, Hail, how welcome art thou here ! 
With joy our hearts are fired 
That were so void of cheer 
When they so much desired 
Thee who dost now appear. 

Our souls were spent with longing and mournful 
was our song 

In thinking of our pleasant fields that we had left 
so long. 

O goddess dear to peasants, 

We hail thy blessed presence, 

For thou alone hast aided us who live a country 
life. 

Within our hearts we treasure 
The memories of thy reign, 

When many a simple pleasure 
From thee we did obtain ; 

When field and fold and vineyard with plenteous¬ 
ness were rife, 


THE FURIES. 83 

And ne’er was heard the rumor of want and wast¬ 
ing strife. 

With what shall I compare thee, O dearest goddess 
Peace ? 

Thou art the blessings of our board, thou art our 
fields’ increase, 

Thou art the farmer’s guardian, on whom his 
hopes are staid, 

Protector of the husbandman to whom he looks 
for aid. 

His little vines shall smile at thee, 

The trampled fig-tree leap to see, 

And every blooming plant and tree 

Shall hail thee, dearest Maid ! 


THE FURIES. 

From the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. 

CASSANDRA. 

A ND from this roof-tree never more shall go 
That chorus, chanting harshest harmony, 
Whose words are ill, whose only thought is woe. 
Yea, drunken in their wild debauchery 



84 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


With human blood, to fire their horrid glee, 
Within this palace evermore shall stay 
That revel-rout of fearful Furies three, 
Whose mocking presence none can drive away. 
Sisters akin in hate, who hate and hate for aye. 


LOVE INSTRUCTED. 

FROM THE GREEK OF BION.-IDYL V. 

/^VUR Lady of Cyprus found me slumbering ; 

By her fair hand was little Eros led, 

The baby Love, with bashful, bended head. 

“ Dear herdsman, pray take Love and teach him 
sing,” 

Parting, she said. In lore of everything 
Sung by us simple shepherds, was he bred, 

Sly Love, so fain to learn ! And as he pled, 

I sang Pan’s pipes, Athene’s flute, the string 
First struck by sweet Apollo, Hermes’ lyre 
Made of the tortoise-shell ; but heedless then, 
Himself would sing the Mother of Desire 
And all her deeds, the loves of gods and men. 

So what I sang to Love I clean forgot, 

But minded all the ditties Love had taught. 



LOVE AND THE BEE . 


85 


LOVE AND THE BEE. 

THEOCRITUS.—IDYL XIX. 

r "PHE little Love, with thievish glee, 

A Was rifling honey, when a bee, 
Molested by his plundering, 

Stabbed all his fingers with her sting, 

And oh, it hurt him cruelly ! 

He leaped, stamped, blew his fingers, whee ! 
And ran, in tearful agony, 

To get his mother’s comforting,— 

The little Love. 

“ O mother, how it twinges me ! 

And yet the beastie was so wee.” 

And Venus smiled in solacing, 

“ Art thou not such a tiny thing ? 

And yet thy wounds,—how sore to see ! 

My little Love.” 


86 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


JOHN. 

THE BIBLE. 

A ND saying this, he was in spirit stirred, 

** And testified and spake, “ I tell you true, 

I am to be betrayed by one of you.” 

We looked one on another when we heard, 
Doubting of whom he spake the dreadful word. 
Now leaned on Jesus’ bosom one we knew 
I^oved by the Master, as he loved but few. 

With this one, Peter, beckoning, conferred 
That he should seek the name. “ Who is it, 
Lord ? ” 

The loved one asked, presuming on his love. 
Said Jesus, “ He to whom I give the bread 
When I have dipped it.” Then to him abhorred, 
Judas, he gave it. O forgiving Dove ! 

O Lamb of God that uncomplaining bled ! 


PHAiDO. 


87 


PH^DO. 

PLATO. 

VX/HEN Cebes ceased, we sat in mute despair ; 
v ” But Socrates, to dissipate our dread, 
Leaned toward my lowly stool and stroked my 
head. 

“ To-morrow sees, perchance, these locks so fair 
All shorn for grief,” fondling my curling hair, 

As was his wont, the gentle Master said. 

“ And yet both thine and mine to-day instead 
Should fall for shame ere our opponents bear 
An uncontested victory away.” 

“ E’en Hercules was not a match for two,” 

Said I ; he answered, “ Call thou then on me, 
Thine Iolaus ,—while it yet is day .” * 

That simple phrase,—O single heart and true, 
Not I, but thou, the Hero verily ! 


* At nightfall he was to take the hemlock. 


88 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION OF THE 
BOOK OF SONGS. 

FROM HEINE. 

r "FHROUGH linden-scented shades I rove, 

* Through woods by fable glamored, 

Beneath the moonbeam’s glance I move 
Enchanted and enamored. 

Onward I go ; above me rings 
A song to sadness wooing ; 

It is the nightingale, she sings 
Of love and love’s undoing. 

Of love and woes of love sings she 
Sob-racked and laughter-shaken, 

So gay a dirge, so sad a glee, 

Forgotten dreams awaken. 

On, on I go ; before me lies, 

Within this wood of fable, 

A pleasant green whereon arise 
Castellate keep and gable. 


PREFACE TO THE BOOK OF SONGS. 89 


Blank window-spaces ;—everywhere 
Sorrow and silence only. 

It seemed the dead would scarcely dare 
Dwell in those ruins lonely ! 

A sphynx as sentry did recline ; 
Hermaphrodite gruesome 

Of love and terror, leonine 

With woman’s head and bosom. 

A woman fair ! desire wild 

In her white face was gleaming ; 

The mute lips arched themselves and smiled 
An invitation seeming. 

The nightingale, she sang so sweet, 

I rent restraint asunder, 

.And as I stooped the lips to greet, 

To me occurred this wonder, 

Living the marble form became, 

The bosom heaved with sobbing, 

She drank my kisses’ ardent flame 
With thirsty passion throbbing. 

She drank the breath from out my breast, 
Such strong desire she bore me ; 


9 o 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


So tightly was my body pressed 
That with her claws she tore me. 

O thrilling torture ! racking bliss ! 
Both pain and joy unbounded ! 

Upon my lips was pressed the kiss 
The while my sides were wounded. 

“ O fairest Sphynx,” sang Philomel, 

“ O love, what is the reason 

That you for aye with pains of hell 
Your bliss celestial season ? 

“ O fairest Sphynx, ah, let for me 
The knot at last be sundered ; 

For many a bygone century 
I have thereover wondered. 


“ All this I might have said very well in good 
prose. . . . But when one reads again his old 

poems in order to refile them a little for a new 
edition, he is taken unawares by the jingling habit 
of rhyme and rhythm, and lo ! it is verse with 
which I preface this third edition of my ‘ Book of 
Songs.’ O Phoebus Apollo ! be these verses bad, 
yet wilt thou fondly forgive me. . . .For thou 

art an all-wise god and knowest well why for so 



BREA M-PICTURES. 


91 


many years I could no longer chiefly busy myself 
with the measure and melody of words. Thou 
knowest why the flame that once delighted the 
world with its brilliant pyrotechnic play, suddenly 
was forced to turn itself to far more practical 
burnings. . . . Thou knowest why it now con¬ 
sumes my heart in smoldering glow. . . . Thou 

understandest me, O god so wise and beautiful ! 
thou who sometime didst change awhile thy golden 
lyre for the strong bow and deadly bolts ! . . . 

Rememberest thou not even yet Marsyas whom 
living thou didst flay? Now it is long ago, and 
need may make a like example . . . Thou 

smilest, O mine eternal father ! ” 

Written at Paris, February 20, 1839. 

Heinrich Heine. 


DREAM-PICTURES. 
FROM HEINE. 


I. 

O NCE did I dream of Love the fierce and strong, 
Of pretty ringlets wreathed with eglantine, 
Of sweet lips archly chiding faults of mine, 
Of minor melodies of musing song. 



92 


PARNASSUS BY PAIL. 


Faded are all those dreams of youthful times 
And swept away my dearest vision-form ! 

To me alone remains what, passion-warm 
I then had uttered forth in tender rhymes. 

Thou stayest, orphaned song ! Then off be flying, 
Follow thou too that vision-form so fleeting, 

And when thou findest it, give it my greeting ; 
To airy shadow send I airy sighing. 

ii. 

In the next dream I saw myself appear 
In holiday attire, with silken vest, 

Gloves on my hands, as tho’ a party guest. 
Before me stood my darling, sweet and dear. 

Bowing, I said, “ Aha, a bride is here, 

Congratulations then are due,—my best ”— 
(Tho’ wildly beat my heart within my breast 
My calmly uttered, chilling words to hear.) 

Then suddenly the bitter tear-drops started 

Out of my darling’s eyes. In waves of weeping 
The gracious image meltingly departed. 

O tender eyes ! O stars of love so holy ! 

Since oft on me in waking as in sleeping 
You downward shine, I trust you, fully, solely. 


THE WEAVERS . 


93 


THE WEAVERS. 

FROM HEINE. 

\ 17 TTH tearless eyes, darkened by grieving, 

* * Gnashing their teeth, a web they are 
weaving ; 

“ Thy shroud are we shaping, O Germany old, 
And into it weaving a curse, threefold ;— 
Weaving, a-weaving ! 

“ A curse on God, in vain supplication 
We prayed him in horrors of cold and starvation ; 
All bootless we waited and hoped and believed, 
Us hath he bemocked and befooled and de¬ 
ceived ;— 

Weaving, a-weaving ! 

“ A curse on Kaiser, the rich men’s Kaiser, 

For woes of the poor no kinder nor wiser ; 

He lets us, when from us our last groat is 
wrung, 

As tho’ we were dogs, be shot at and hung;— 
Weaving, a-weaving ! 


94 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


“ A curse on country, the fatherland rotten 
Where shame and disgrace flaunt and truth is for¬ 
gotten, 

Where every bloom fades untimely away, 

And royally battens the worm on decay ;— 
Weaving, a-weaving ! 

“ The loom is a-creaking, in ceaseless flight 
The shuttle is flashing by day and by night; 

Thy shroud are we shaping, O Germany old, 
Yes, into it weaving the curse threefold ;— 
Weaving, a-weaving ! ” 


ON THE HARDENBERG. 

FROM HEINE. 

A RISE, O visions old ! 

** Burst wide thy doors, O heart ! 
Let rapturous songs of gladness 
And streaming tears of sadness 
In wondrous blending start. 

The pinewood to behold, 

By crystal streams I ’ll stray, 



ON THE HARDENBERG. 


95 


Where throstles sweet are singing 
And haughty harts upspringing 
Roam on their royal way. 

Then with a spirit bold 

I ’ll seek the mountain’s height, 
To riven crags I ’ll clomber 
Where ruined castles sombre 
Stand in the morning light. 

Upon that age of gold 

I ’ll ponder, seated there,— 

The faded knightly splendor, 

The courtly grace and tender, 

Of lord and lady fair. 

The tilting yard where rolled 
Horseman and horse o’erthrown 
By the proud lord who vaunted 
A courage never daunted— 

Is now with grass o’ergrown. 

And ivy vines enfold 
The balcony where stood 
The dame before whose glances 
The breaker of the lances 
Was in his turn subdued. 


9 6 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


But long ago to mold 

Have both subduers passed, 
And still their Victor hoary, 
The Reaper grim of story, 
Will lay us low at last. 


SLEEP. 

FROM TURGENEF. 

A SLEEP in every place is every one ; 

** In town and city, talega and sleigh, 
Sitting or standing, all the night and day, 
Merchant and tchinovnik. In snow or sun 
Within his tower the watchman sleeps ; upon 
The bench, his Honor, stern in black array, 
And in the cell, Dishonor, clad in gray. 

A sleep of death the freedmen have begun. 

Asleep they sow and cut and flail the wheat, 

By winds of sleep the winnowers are fanned. 
Sleep sire and son, the beater and the beat; 

All, save the tavern’s eye. And in her hand 
Clenching a jug, snow couched head and feet, 

In endless Sleep lies Russia, holy land ! 



THE MOON-BALLAD. 


97 


LIFE. 

FROM THE FRENCH. 

[ IFE is a gleam 

Of Love’s young ray, 
A fading Dream, 

And then—Good day ! 

Life is a bubble 
Iris bright, 

A touch of Trouble. 

Then—Good night ! 


THE MOON-BALLAD. 

OF MUSSET. 

HURCH-TOWER at night’s high noon ; 
Above, in the umber sky, 

The moon ;— 

A dot upon an i. 



9 S 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


What hidden sprite, O moon, 
Dangles in gleeful way, 
Balloon 

So big and round and gay ? 


To Cyclops Night blear-eyed, 
Sight art thou ? Pallid mask 
To hide 

Some cherub’s spying task ? 


Or but a beast that rolls 
A rondure like an egg’s 
Or bowl’s ;— 

Dad-Longlegs, sans the legs ? 


Or, best, the dial of doom, 

Grim horologe that tolls, 
Bim, boom , 

The hours to damned souls ? 


Poor devil who this night hears 
The sound, ah, count can he 
The years 
Of his eternity ? 


THE MOON-BALLAD. 


99 


Is it a snake that gnaws 

Thy disk ? Whose swart embrace 
So draws 

To long affright thy face ? 


Who circumvented thee 

Last night ? With leafy roof, 
What tree 

Against thy glance was proof ? 

Spy since that man was born, 

On window bars at dark 
Your horn 

Hangs like a question mark ! 


Well, my impostress wan, 
Phoebe the real fair 
Is gone, 

The depths her body bear. 

Thou art a face alone 

And in thy wrinkling skin 
Is shown 

How age comes stealing in. 


100 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


Huntress, against whose breast 
The stag at early morn 
Was pressed, 

O Goddess white, return ! 


Dian ! ’mid grasses wet 

Moving with virgin grace, 
Beset 

By leaping hounds of chase ! 


The chamois upon the cliff 

Pausing with startled glance 
To sniff 

Danger ; and its advance 


As headlong after their prey, 
Tuneful that late were mute, 
Away 

Sweep hounds in hot pursuit. 

O in that secret glade 

Hyperion’s twin to see 
Betrayed 

Bare to the wave-kissed knee ! 


THE MOON-BALLAD. 


IOI 


Or on the Latmian steep 

“ In such a night as this ” 
Asleep, 

To dream of Dian’s kiss ! 


Moon, in our memory, 

Such tales of rare embrace 
To thee 

Will ever add new grace, 


And men with gladsomeness 
Thy form rejuvenescent 
Will bless, 

Full moon or waning crescent. 

Thee will the goodman gray 
Love at the lonely hour 
When bay 

His hounds at thy mystic power 


Thee will the pilot love 

Beholding thy perfect bow 
Above, 

Glassed brokenly below ; 


102 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL . 


And the lass with quickening tread 
Passing the shadowy brake 
Adread, 

Yet singing with heart a-quake ; 

While ever beneath thy gaze 

Like Bruin dragging his chain 
There sways 

The tireless monster main. 


And for what other sight 
Come I in cold or heat 
Each night 

To take my wonted seat, 


Than that which rises soon 
Above yon tower high ?— 
The moon— 

A dot upon an i! 


ART. 


103 


ART. 

FROM GAUTIER. 

V/’ ES, that work excels 
* That ’gainst release from trammel 
Rebels, 

Verse, marble, gem, enamel. 

With useless bonds away ! 

Yet for right progress, Muse, 

You may 

Close-fitting buskins choose. 

Fie on verse unconfined, 

A sort of easy shoes, 

A kind 

That any foot may use ! 

Carver, reject the clay 

Where, while the fingers ply, 

Away 

The listless thought may fly ; 


PARNASSUS BY RAIL. 


In Parian marble rare, 

In alabaster hard, 

With care 

The outline pure regard ; 


Thee Syracuse may lend 

Its bronze in whose embrace 
Do blend 

Touches of strength and grace. 


Graver, with firm hand trace 
In veined chalcedon 
The face 

Of bright Hyperion. 


Cast water tints away, 

Painter, and fix thy skill 
For aye 

In the enameller’s kiln ; 

In blue that all time beholds 
Make fays that featly swim 
In folds, 

Heraldic monsters grim ; 


ART . 


105 


The Virgin and her Son 
In the cloud tripartite ; 

Upon 

The globe, the cross of light. 

All passes into dust 

Save deathless Art alone, 

The bust 

Survives the ruined throne. 

Medals of grand profile 

Which plowmen’s shares upturn, 
Reveal 

Emperors great and stern. 

E’en gods away may pass, 

Yet Verse’s sacred reign, 

Than brass 

More lasting shall remain. 
ENVOY. 

Let steel and mallet sound 

When bonds material lock, 
Spell-bound, 

Thy dream within the block. 




























































































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